Cellular Roaming: The New Deals
Traveling with a cellular phones gets easier
as carriers work together toward a nationwide
network
By Karen Kleiner
How often would you take your cellular phone
out of town with you . . . if you knew you
could make and receive calls wherever you went?
Cellular roaming technology is continually
evolving toward this goal. Ultimately, we'll
have a seamless communications network that is
as extensive as it is simple to access.
According to Kevin McKeard, director of
intercarrier services at McCaw Cellular, the
largest nonwireline carrier in the U.S., "The
goal is to have the roamer able to use features
as easily as in the home market."
For cellular companies, making roaming easy
for the customer is a difficult task. To
accomplish this task requires new technology
and increasingly complex agreements among more
and more carriers. Yet, the results of the
carriers' efforts appear promising.
The FCC divided the United States into 306
Metro Service Areas (MSAs), or urban markets,
and 428 Rural Service Areas (RSAs). Today, all
MSAs have regular service available. Of the 428
rural markets, approximately 150 now have
cellular service. By June 1992, cellular
service should be available in all rural
markets, enabling the cellular user to roam in
any part of the country.
The Federal Communications Commission
licensed two carriers within each urban or
rural market. There's an A carrier (the
nonwireline carrier) and a B carrier (the
wireline carrier), usually affiliated with the
local telephone company. For example, in Los
Angeles, the A carrier is L.A. Cellular, a
company that deals exclusively in cellular
communications, while the B carrier is PacTel
Cellular, owned by Pacific Bell, the local
landline giant. There are approximately four
hundred such cellular companies that hold
licenses to the numerous markets throughout the
country.
You must choose between the A or B carrier
when you sign up for service in your home
market. However, when you're roaming, you can
alternate as you like between the A and B
providers in the host service area. Cellular
phones have an A/B switch, which allows you to
choose between the two. You may want to switch
for a variety of reasons. For instance, the
alternate carrier may have lower rates, or it
may provide a wider coverage area in the city
you're traveling through. Also, your carrier
(the A carrier) may not have a roaming
agreement on the A band in the market you're
traveling in, or may have an agreement with the
B carrier in that market.
When you become a cellular customer, your
carrier will give you roaming capability as a
standard feature. You must pay for all airtime
(as with local cellular use), whether you're
making or receiving a call. Rates vary from
approximately 50 cents to $1.00 per minute. If
you're calling long distance, additional
charges are paid either by you or the person
you're speaking with. Most cellular companies
also charge a roaming rate of $2.00 to $3.00
per day. A few companies, like MetroPhone in
Philadelphia, charge no extra daily roaming fee
to their subscribers.
The procedure for placing an outgoing call
varies, depending upon which carrier you're
signed up with, which market you're roaming in
and the agreements your cellular company has
made within that market. Every cellular carrier
provides specific information on dialing
procedures in its roamer guide, which you can
obtain by calling an information number. In a
host city, you can call the carrier directly
and inquire about roaming procedures.
A good additional resource for keeping on top
of the market boundaries is The Cellular
Telephone Directory, published by
Communications Publishing [(800) 366-6731] This
reference guide contains maps of all coverage
areas. It also includes instructions for
sending and receiving calls in all cities, as
well as an 800 number for each carrier.
Placing Calls as a Roamer
When you're away from your home area and able
to roam, a roam indicator LCD or verbal display
will light up on your phone. Usually, you'll be
able to roam automatically, dialing out without
any prior arrangements with the host carrier.
Many carriers offer special roaming features
that truly benefit the customer. For example,
"Proactive Roaming," offered by BellSouth
Mobility, takes the initiative and calls you
when you enter a new market. The service
welcomes you to the city and gives general
roaming information. "The call is free to the
customer," says Joanne Blout, director of
strategic market planning for BellSouth, "and
we give the customer the option of not being
called again when he or she returns to that
particular market."
Dialing "*711" in most markets will connect
you with a roaming information line. The
information line generally provides a tutorial
on roaming and in some cases uses interactive
voice response.
Receiving Calls As A Roamer
As a rule, if you let callers know when and
where you'll be, they can reach you by dialing
the roamer port access number in the city
you're in, followed by your ten-digit cellular
phone number. To expedite the process, you can
leave a message on your outgoing voice mail
informing callers where you'll be and the
roamer port access number to reach you. If the
caller chooses to reach you on your mobile
phone, he or she pays the long distance phone
charge and you pay for the cellular air time.
Several services exist that make reaching a
roamer easier. One such service, called "Follow
Me Roaming" (FMR), provided by GTE
Telecommunications, is available primarily
through B carriers. Another, Appex
Corporation's "Roaming American"--sometimes
called "Nationlink"--is available primarily
through A carriers.
FMR can be accessed in over 300 cities
nationwide. You can tell if the city you're
roaming in offers it by looking in your roamer
guidebook. When you're ready to activate the
service, you simply dial "*18" and press SEND.
You'll hear a confirming beep tone or message.
Then press END. Within fifteen to thirty
minutes, callers can reach you simply by
dialing your mobile number, without even
knowing where you are.
Some slight disadvantages to Follow Me
Roaming should be pointed out. For instance,
when a caller uses FMR to reach you, your
account is charged for both cellular airtime
and the long distance tolls from the caller's
city to the city you're roaming in. Also, when
FMR is activated, your voice-mail cannot be
used. This means if you're away from the car,
on the phone, or your phone is turned off, your
calls will not be answered.
If you leave a market or wish to deactivate
the service while there, you simply dial "*19."
At midnight every night, FMR automatically
deactivates, so if you want to continue the
service, you need to reactivate it the next
morning. When you travel to a new market, FMR
must be reprogrammed in order for calls to
reach you.
Similar to FMR, Nationlink allows a caller to
reach the roamer simply by dialing that
particular phone number. The roamer pays both
airtime and long distance charges. Nationlink
also provides an option called "Caller
Notification," which enables the roamer to save
on long distance calls. In this mode, the
caller hears a message stating, "The customer
you are trying to reach is not in the service
area." The message then gives the caller the
roamer port number for the city the roamer is
in. With this option, the caller, rather than
the roamer, pays the long distance charges--if
the caller chooses to proceed with the call.
Call Delivery
A still simpler method of receiving calls is
currently available within limited geographic
areas: call delivery. This service relies upon
a network of computers belonging to different
carriers in different markets to communicate
and deliver calls.
PacTel's call delivery service, "Auto-
Access," requires just one activation to be
kept on indefinitely while you travel,
eliminating the hassle of programming it again
the next day, as you would have to with most
other roaming plans. PacTel currently offers
this service to its subscribers in many cities
in California, as well as in Reno, Nevada. It
plans to expand the service to other cities,
including Las Vegas. Other carriers have
similar networks in Florida, the Great Lakes
region, the Northeast, the Pacific Northwest
and in Canada.
McCaw Cellular currently provides a call
delivery service in both the Pacific Northwest
and Florida. Their "Cellular One" network
provides service along all major interstate
corridors in Washington, Oregon and British
Columbia. By October of this year, it plans to
introduce a "seamless network" in which
computers from those regions, as well as
California and the Northeast, will be linked.
By December, McCaw will add Texas and
Minnesota. Call delivery will be offered
everywhere in the system.
Bob Ratliffe, vice president of
communications for McCaw Cellular, says that
"when McCaw finishes its national network, all
home market features will be available for
roamers." For example, voice mail that is
inoperative when using Follow Me Roaming will
be available with call delivery when the
network is fully operational.
Nationwide Cellular Switchboard
The overall goal of the industry, according
to Norman Black, director of public affairs and
communications for the Cellular
Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA),
is to provide nationwide automatic call
delivery. He believes that if the technology
progresses on schedule and Judge Green (the
magistrate in charge of the AT&T breakup)
issues a waiver, the entire industry will have
call delivery in place by the first quarter of
1992. This means that all the computers
throughout the country will be able to
communicate with each other. All calls will
find the correct customers, no matter where
they are, and without them having to do
anything other than pick up their phones!
A national network will have other benefits,
as well. Presently, roamers sometimes lose a
call while moving to a different market. "Call
handoff," available in some regions, prevents
this from occurring. The computer passes the
call from one system to the next without the
roamer hearing any clue of the switch. As
different types of carrier computers become
compatible with each other, call handoff will
be easier to achieve on a national basis. Any
custom features that subscribers have in their
home market will be transferred and accessible
in the market in which they're roaming.
With the arrival of a national network, the
industry may also find innovative solutions to
the problem of cellular fraud, which resulted
in $100 million in losses last year alone. For
one thing, call validation will become that
much simpler for the roamer and more accurate,
helping to insure calls are not illegally
charged to a user's number. Likewise, computers
in the market that the roamer enters will be
able to identify customers and know whether
their credit is good even before they place
their first call.
In the future, cellular phone numbers will
truly be identified with individual
subscribers, regardless of their location. This
will be a major step toward what many
visionaries see as a new communications age: An
era where we will have a go-anywhere personal
communications device with us at all times.
This pocket-sized unit will retain all the
features and simplicity we're used to from our
present home landline phones . . . and more.